Fender Mike McCready Stratocaster RW 3 Color Sunburst Aged Style

First of all, thank you very much for the fast delivery! The guitar comes with a Fender Tolex case. When I unpacked it, I immediately noticed the beautifully grained headstock and was very pleased that the two-piece body has an even grain! Nothing looks cheaper than multi-piece bodies with different grains. Many photos of the McCready show very big differences and you can be "unlucky" when buying online. The nitro lacquer finish is very thin and you can see the wood pores very well. The exaggerated "lacquer cracks" that are common on custom store strats are not present here. The back of the neck is visually perfect! Not such unrealistic transitions from the worn areas to the areas with lacquer, as even on Masterbuilt guitars! Now to the "expected" deductions: The frets are rough, like on a 100 euro cheap guitar. The aging with the "battle scars" in the varnish looks very artificial. The areas without varnish are unnaturally light in color (this disappears by itself with intensive use, but it still takes forever! ). The string height is very well adjusted, but the length adjustment of the string riders was not good.
This was all clear to me before I bought it (one of the reasons for the price difference to custom store guitars) and can all be improved by myself. First I unscrewed the neck. A perfect fit and no additional "shim" to compensate for the neck tilt. Perfect! Then, out of curiosity, I unscrewed the pickguard. The body is cleanly milled, the pickups are McCready Signature single coils. Unfortunately, the bridge pickup has no tone control (but this can easily be changed). I polished the frets by hand (masked with crepe, then polished to a high gloss with Autosol polishing paste) and the fretboard edges are already rounded - perfect. The bone nut is not nicely rounded at the edges and has varnish residue that does not look nice! Just sand and polish a little! I worked on the unrealistic contours of the paint edges with a cutter blade (a lot of work! ) and then smoothed them out with sandpaper. I treated the untreated areas without lacquer with a little soot on a damp cloth.
I already had 2 Custom Shop Stratocasters. In comparison, I think the McCready Strat is on a par. For the same money as for the McCready, you get a "perfect" Ibanez, but if you want a "heavy relic" Fender, the Mexican McCready is a good choice!